Time to end this.
She snaked the belt around Fash’s sword hand and jerked. The blade flew free. Lords ducked. It crashed down on the table and skidded to a stop, its point facing Caldane. The Caineron lord recoiled.
“Hic!”
A look of panic turned his florid face blotchy. He grabbed the arms of his heavy chair and hung on like a drowning man.
“Hic!”
The chair started to rise, with him in it.
“HIC!”
Gorbel dropped the pook and quickly rounded the table to stand behind his father. With his hands on Caldane’s shoulders, he brought his weight to bear and forced him down. Brandan (who didn’t like wine) offered his cup of cider. Gorbel took it and poured it down his father’s throat.
“. . . hic . . .”
The chair settled.
Meanwhile Fash angrily tried to wipe the blood off his face, although both forehead and nose continued to bleed. Jame stood ready with her leather shield and the belt, which she continued to twitch experimentally, trying to master its ungainly length and balance.
“Yield?”
He sputtered, fighting to regain control of himself.
“An . . . interesting demonstration, to make use of whatever crude means one finds at hand. And we all thought that your fighting style was so pure.”
“Never assume. What works, works.”
Torisen unfolded his arms and took a deep breath.
“I believe that my lordan has proved her point. Now, if we may proceed . . .”
Jame put aside Marc’s apron and belt. The cut on her shoulder stung. Would these petty tests never end? Then again, she thought, glancing at Gorbel, not so petty after all, for either of them. As for Fash, an old friend had said it long ago: To such a man, she would always be a lure and a trap, because he would never take her seriously.
But her brother was holding out the emblem of his acceptance. She stepped forward to receive it.
“Doggie!”
The pook hurtled between them, pursued by a miniature whirlwind in red. The latter knocked the glass token out of Torisen’s hand and Jame, recoiling, stepped on it. Crunch. Both regarded the shattered remains.
“Can we share anything without breaking it?” murmured Torisen. Then he sighed. “So be it.” Reaching into a pocket he drew out a small, feline carving, and gave it to Jame.
She stared at it. “Oh. I’d forgotten all about this.”
“I didn’t.”
Jame retreated with her prize, bemused.
Torisen dipped into the sack and drew out the next-to-last piece of glass.
“Caineron.”
Caldane still clutched the arms of his chair but had stopped hiccupping. He glared at the gory, snuffling spectacle that was Fash, then turned to Gorbel. “Well, go on. It seems, after all, that you’re the best of a poor lot.”
Gorbel approached the Highlord and stolidly received his token.
“Jaran.”
Kirien had been standing thoughtfully to one side. Now she shrugged as if making up her mind, slipped off her gray coat, and approached Torisen in a discreet but still revealing white shirt.
Exclamations of surprise and horror rose from some (but not all) of the lords. “It can’t be.” “It is!” “Another damned female!”
“So what if it is?” Kedan, acting lord of the Jaran, waved off the outraged faces turned toward him. “Jedrak made his choice and the rest of his house supports it. If the Highlord does too, what right do any of you have to protest against it?”
Torisen handed Kirien the token. “You picked a fine time to unveil,” he said, under cover of a growing storm of outrage.
“Unnatural, perverse . . .” “. . . bad enough that the Knorth have run mad, but the Jaran . . . !” “. . . rathorns and Whinno-hir, living together . . .”
Kirien smiled. “They had to find out sooner or later, for those who hadn’t already guessed. Not that it was ever meant to be a secret. ‘Observe, describe, learn,’ we Jaran say. As it is, your sister diverts attention from me as I do from her. Let them fight us both, or neither.”
Torisen considered this.
“I expect, when I have time to think, that I’ll be grateful.”
Later, Jame showed the statuette to Timmon and Gorbel. “We fought over it as children until it broke. I kept the hind leg . . .”
Until the changer Keral had taken it from her and dropped it into the fire over her furious protests.
“No mementos for you, brat. This is your home now.”
“. . . until I lost it. What did you get, Timmon?”
The Ardeth opened the linen packet and showed them.
Gorbel peered at the contents. “A fire-cured finger and a cracked ring? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I except—I think—this is my father’s ring.”
“And his finger? If so, how did the Highlord get it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t guess. He said that it was my house’s business. ‘Do with it what you will.’ ”
Jame wasn’t sure that her brother had done a wise thing. She remembered her dream of Tori breaking Pereden’s neck and of the pyre at the Cataracts from which someone had taken what were surely these relics. Since Adric believed that he had found his living son in Timmon, he would presumably no longer continue his bone hunt and would hopefully resume control of his house. She heard again the Ardeth lord’s clear voice rising above the uproar over Kirien’s “unmasking”: “Be that as it may, we still have business to discuss.”
In everything not touching on Pereden, he seemed to be all right, although no doubt Dari would continue to press for his replacement. But if Adric or Timmon were ever to learn the truth . . .
“Huh,” said Gorbel. “You two have all the luck. All I got was this dumb chunk of glass.”
VI
History Lessons
Bars of light streamed through cracks in the shed’s walls, piercing the jars shelved from floor to ceiling. The air was thick with motes and the scent of crushed herbs. Half a dozen jars had fallen and smashed on the floor, mixing their contents with shards of glass.
What a mess, thought Kindrie.
He gingerly stepped through the debris and picked up a fragment of dried root, trying to guess what it was. His job at Mount Alban was to memorize the order of the containers. However, curiosity as a healer had also led him to learn as much as he could about the herbs themselves. Grayish brown and wrinkled outside, inside white and spongy . . . but it was the fragrance that gave him his clue: angelica.
And this straight, dark brown root with its bitter smell—black snake root, surely.
Alfalfa, feverfew, ginger . . .
There was a pattern, of course: all were good for rheumatism.
He collected every bit he could find, carefully picking out the glass, wincing as splinters pricked his fingers, and laid them out on the table. Now the jars. Some large pieces fit together easily but others had been reduced to a powder that had joined the dancing dust motes. It was impossible to do a complete job, however long he took, and the day was already waning toward dusk.
There. Five partial jars held together by his will, filled with as much of their contents as had survived. Now to return them to their rightful places on the shelves.
Oh, bother. None of the containers were labeled and all had moved to fill any gap. Push some aside here, more there . . .